Rally, a fractional alternative investing platform in collectibles, has raised a $30 million Series B funding round led by Accel and has nabbed a $50 million debt facility from Upper90 Capital.
The funding round comes on the heels of some impressive growth the company has seen, having seen more new investors participate in offerings in the first quarter this year than all of 2020 combined, marking a 575% increase compared to the same quarter the year before, a news release shows.
Existing investors such as Upfront Ventures, Social Leverage and others participated in the round. The company has more than $50 million in equity financing to date.
Rally now has 15 categories and added over 10 just last year. George Leimer, CEO of Rally, told FinLedger in an interview that the company will use the fresh capital to expand the number of assets on its platform, grow its team and fuel user growth. Rally has just under 30 employees and plans to nearly double its headcount by the year’s end. Although Leimer wouldn’t say how many exact users the platform has, he did say it has several hundred thousand.
Rally’s platform aims to “democratize alternative asset investing,” by providing access to markets that have typically been available to the few. Some interesting assets that Rally will offer include a $2 million Broadside copy of the Declaration of Independence printed in July 1776, a pair of game-worn sneakers gifted to Lebron James by Kobe Bryant and a Lunar Meteorite listed at $350,000.
Leimer explained that the company makes money in a couple of ways.
“We take an underwriting fee on the initial offerings of the assets, we refer to it as a sourcing fee,” Leimer said. “We actually sell companion merchandise that goes along with the offerings that allows people to be even more connected to the offering.”
Going forward, Rally will look for other ways to monetize the trading volume on the site. Leimer said looking ahead the company plans to end the year with about $75 million in assets under management. Also, he said over the next couple of months the company is going to create a new real time trading platform to give people more opportunities to trade.
“We’re just going to continue to increase the diversity of the assets because we think that’s what our winning formula is,” he said.
In other recent news, Collective, which provides a back office platform for self-employed folks, has raised $20 million in a Series A funding round to bolster its technology and hire more employees. General Catalyst led the round while Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s venture capital fund Sound Ventures also joined. The latest capital injection brings the company’s totaling funding to $28.65 million.